While planning their book publishing project, new authors should carefully explore all publishing alternatives, including trade publishers, self-publishing, and digital print-on-demand publishing. After a honest evaluation of alternatives, trade publishing, through large publishing houses for retail channels, may–indeed–make the most sense. But, new authors should, at least, explore more entrepreneurial publishing alternatives.

Ultimately, each author’s decision will rest on how the responsibility and control they want over their project, and how they want to spend their time after their book is written.

The upside of trade publishers is that they take responsibility for the myriad of details involved in book design, editing, production, and distribution. This frees the new author to spend more time leveraging their book into greater back-end profits through coaching, consulting, and speaking. The downside, of course, is an inevitable loss of control, plus–of course–less income.

New authors should take a careful inventory of their resources, skills, and–most important–how they want to spend their time. As technology continues to change publishing, it might be that new authors will use different publishing alternatives for different projects at different stages of their career.